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Fly or Fall
Eleanor - known as Nell - thinks of herself as a wimp. Even though her life has not been easy, she clings to the safety of the familiar. Married young and dependent on her teacher husband’s wages, Nell has stayed at home in Battersea, with her twin children and her increasingly invalid mother. Following the death of her mother the family’s fortunes suddenly change. Trevor, her husband, is wildly enthusiastic about their ‘move up in the world’; he plans to give up teaching and move house away from London. Nell is gripped by a nebulous fear of some unknown disaster that is waiting to trip them up, but her husband steamrollers her objections.
Now in her early thirties and living in an unfamiliar landscape, away from old friends, Nell feels cast adrift. She is increasingly aware that Trevor is no longer the man she married and their young teenage twins, Jonathan and Juliet, are grumpy and difficult. The women she meets, Felicity and Katherine, seem shallow, materialistic and promiscuous. The new house is unwelcoming and needs modernisation. She is thrust into a continuing chaos of rubble and renovation. Although one of the men working for the building firm is infamous as a local Lothario, he doesn’t make a pass at her. At first she’s grateful, but can’t help wondering why he’s not interested.
When Nell takes a bar job at the local sports club, she is exposed to an overheated atmosphere of flirtation and gossip. Influenced by her new friends and the world in which she now moves, she begins to blossom and to take pleasure in the possibilities which seem to be opening up for her. She meets and forms a deeper friendship with the quirky new-age Elizabeth, a very different character to her other friends. As Nell begins to enjoy herself and to become more enthusiastic about her life, it seems her husband is on the opposite end of a cosmic seesaw on a downward trajectory. When she is pursued by a beautiful and enigmatic young man, and she is tempted into behaviour she would never have previously imagined herself capable of, the foreshadowed disaster happens.
FLY OR FALL follows the dismantling of all of Nell’s certainties, her preconceptions and her moral code. Unwelcome truths about her friends, her husband, her teenage children and herself are revealed. Relationships are not what they seem. The hostility between brothers is exposed and finally explained. She realises the hair’s breadth between wishful thinking, self-deception and lies.
Ultimately FLY OR FALL is a love story, and by its conclusion everything has altered for Nell, the woman who doesn’t like change. But she has rebuilt herself as a different person, a braver person, and she has embarked with optimism on a totally transformed life.
Now in her early thirties and living in an unfamiliar landscape, away from old friends, Nell feels cast adrift. She is increasingly aware that Trevor is no longer the man she married and their young teenage twins, Jonathan and Juliet, are grumpy and difficult. The women she meets, Felicity and Katherine, seem shallow, materialistic and promiscuous. The new house is unwelcoming and needs modernisation. She is thrust into a continuing chaos of rubble and renovation. Although one of the men working for the building firm is infamous as a local Lothario, he doesn’t make a pass at her. At first she’s grateful, but can’t help wondering why he’s not interested.
When Nell takes a bar job at the local sports club, she is exposed to an overheated atmosphere of flirtation and gossip. Influenced by her new friends and the world in which she now moves, she begins to blossom and to take pleasure in the possibilities which seem to be opening up for her. She meets and forms a deeper friendship with the quirky new-age Elizabeth, a very different character to her other friends. As Nell begins to enjoy herself and to become more enthusiastic about her life, it seems her husband is on the opposite end of a cosmic seesaw on a downward trajectory. When she is pursued by a beautiful and enigmatic young man, and she is tempted into behaviour she would never have previously imagined herself capable of, the foreshadowed disaster happens.
FLY OR FALL follows the dismantling of all of Nell’s certainties, her preconceptions and her moral code. Unwelcome truths about her friends, her husband, her teenage children and herself are revealed. Relationships are not what they seem. The hostility between brothers is exposed and finally explained. She realises the hair’s breadth between wishful thinking, self-deception and lies.
Ultimately FLY OR FALL is a love story, and by its conclusion everything has altered for Nell, the woman who doesn’t like change. But she has rebuilt herself as a different person, a braver person, and she has embarked with optimism on a totally transformed life.
413 pages, ebook
First published September 1, 2013
9 people want to read
About the author
Gilli Allan
6 books16 followers I write award winning contemporary romantic fiction with an edge. I refuse to prettify or romanticise the tricky business of relationships and love. My philosophy is that life is not a fairy tale. It can be confusing and difficult. Sex is not always awesome; it can be awkward and embarrassing, and it has consequences. You don't always fall for Mr Right, even if he falls for you. And realising you're in love is not always good news. It can make the future look daunting.
All three of my recent books, published by Accent Press - TORN, LIFE CLASS and FLY OR FALL - have received Chill with a Book AWARDS.
I went to art school and originally worked as an illustrator in advertising. I began writing when my son was small and was published immediately. But those early books were not successful - maybe I was ahead of my time? - and there was a long interval before I was published again.
I now live in a beautiful valley in the Cotswold Hills. I wouldn't be able to live the life I do without the support (emotional and financial) of my husband. Our son, Tom, is also an author. His popular history, the Vikings in Britain (by Thomas Williams) will be published by Harper Collins in summer 2017.
All three of my recent books, published by Accent Press - TORN, LIFE CLASS and FLY OR FALL - have received Chill with a Book AWARDS.
I went to art school and originally worked as an illustrator in advertising. I began writing when my son was small and was published immediately. But those early books were not successful - maybe I was ahead of my time? - and there was a long interval before I was published again.
I now live in a beautiful valley in the Cotswold Hills. I wouldn't be able to live the life I do without the support (emotional and financial) of my husband. Our son, Tom, is also an author. His popular history, the Vikings in Britain (by Thomas Williams) will be published by Harper Collins in summer 2017.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 5, 2021
It’s 2007 and Nell, stay-at-home mum to two teenagers, is still stuck in the 1980s with her shapeless Oxfam clothes and her CND pendant and her slightly other-worldly approach to material goods. Husband Trevor is rather more in tune with the times. When Nell inherits her mother’s house Trevor pushes for them to sell up and buy a place in the Home Counties which he proceeds to modernise and extend and to fill with all the 21st century gadgets that Nell has been happily living without.
Poor Nell is a fish out of water, suddenly thrown into a world of interior design, posh friends, sports clubs and casual adultery. Prodded by her new friends she upgrades her wardrobe, cuts her hippy waist length hair and develops a passionate interest in soft furnishings. She even finds herself wondering (and, dear reader, we are wondering too) if Trevor really deserves to be the only man in her life. Perhaps she could get closer to the sexy rich guy who so blatantly propositions her. Or should she stray with the bit of rough who is building her utility room and double garage. (Look, it’s 2007: utility rooms and double garages were still considered cool back then.)
Come the financial crash, the comfortable lifestyle of her new friends is threatened and their sexual peccadillos, alcoholism and eating disorders are suddenly exposed. Will Nell cope? Can she build a new life for herself? Will she find true love? Will she fly or fall?
This is far from your conventional love story. In fact, it’s barely a love story at all. It’s more like Jane Austen for the 21st century. Austen was a social commentator with a sharp and satirical eye, whose love stories conceal a lot of wicked little barbs on the state of the Regency world she lived in. (If you don’t believe me, read them again.) So Gilli Allan’s book is really about Home Counties life and the veneer of glossy success that is pasted over the misery of the relationships that struggle on behind those constantly titivated facades.
I generally hate books like this and at first I did sort of resent the time I was spending on it. Allan’s style, though, draws you in very quickly. Like Nell, I recognised the characters are superficial and unworthy of any emotional effort but, like her, I got sucked in. I had to know what happened. And you, dear reader, will find yourself desperate to know what happened too, so no spoilers. Enjoy the ride.
Highlights include the middle class house party from hell (probably my favourite bit of the book and a reminder that thanks to covid we’ve all been excused some ghastly evenings) and the detailed descriptions of décor. Each of the main characters lives in a very different kind of house. All of them are dripping with money but all are in a diverse style. Just reading about their furnishings immediately places the characters. “Oh yes,” says my beloved of one of them, “That’s the house I’d live in if I had the money.” She’s right of course: it belongs to the most sympathetic character in the book.
Strangely, although most of the characters are in many ways quite ghastly, all have at least some saving graces. Allan’s sharpness skewers but doesn’t then twist the skewer in the wound. The eating disorders, the alcoholism, the eternal lies from almost everybody – they are all the result of deep unhappiness and human weakness. It’s only because I had some sympathy for all of them that I was able to get to the end.
Will Nell navigate this mess with any of her principles intact? Will her marriage survive? Will the kids cope or will they go to the bad? And should she go for a modern fitted kitchen or a more eclectic vintage look? You’ll have to read the book to find out.
Poor Nell is a fish out of water, suddenly thrown into a world of interior design, posh friends, sports clubs and casual adultery. Prodded by her new friends she upgrades her wardrobe, cuts her hippy waist length hair and develops a passionate interest in soft furnishings. She even finds herself wondering (and, dear reader, we are wondering too) if Trevor really deserves to be the only man in her life. Perhaps she could get closer to the sexy rich guy who so blatantly propositions her. Or should she stray with the bit of rough who is building her utility room and double garage. (Look, it’s 2007: utility rooms and double garages were still considered cool back then.)
Come the financial crash, the comfortable lifestyle of her new friends is threatened and their sexual peccadillos, alcoholism and eating disorders are suddenly exposed. Will Nell cope? Can she build a new life for herself? Will she find true love? Will she fly or fall?
This is far from your conventional love story. In fact, it’s barely a love story at all. It’s more like Jane Austen for the 21st century. Austen was a social commentator with a sharp and satirical eye, whose love stories conceal a lot of wicked little barbs on the state of the Regency world she lived in. (If you don’t believe me, read them again.) So Gilli Allan’s book is really about Home Counties life and the veneer of glossy success that is pasted over the misery of the relationships that struggle on behind those constantly titivated facades.
I generally hate books like this and at first I did sort of resent the time I was spending on it. Allan’s style, though, draws you in very quickly. Like Nell, I recognised the characters are superficial and unworthy of any emotional effort but, like her, I got sucked in. I had to know what happened. And you, dear reader, will find yourself desperate to know what happened too, so no spoilers. Enjoy the ride.
Highlights include the middle class house party from hell (probably my favourite bit of the book and a reminder that thanks to covid we’ve all been excused some ghastly evenings) and the detailed descriptions of décor. Each of the main characters lives in a very different kind of house. All of them are dripping with money but all are in a diverse style. Just reading about their furnishings immediately places the characters. “Oh yes,” says my beloved of one of them, “That’s the house I’d live in if I had the money.” She’s right of course: it belongs to the most sympathetic character in the book.
Strangely, although most of the characters are in many ways quite ghastly, all have at least some saving graces. Allan’s sharpness skewers but doesn’t then twist the skewer in the wound. The eating disorders, the alcoholism, the eternal lies from almost everybody – they are all the result of deep unhappiness and human weakness. It’s only because I had some sympathy for all of them that I was able to get to the end.
Will Nell navigate this mess with any of her principles intact? Will her marriage survive? Will the kids cope or will they go to the bad? And should she go for a modern fitted kitchen or a more eclectic vintage look? You’ll have to read the book to find out.
July 1, 2014
When her fortune changes and money is no issue for a change, Nell’s husband is keen to move away from their hectic lifestyle in London and put down roots in a country village. Nell isn't really keen but is railroaded into the decision. Nell feels like she didn't really have a choice to move away from all that is familiar to her. Apart from the change of scenery there appears to be a change in Nell's husband too. He soon becomes a different person, and not the person Nell married. Nell becomes lonely and isolated but makes new friends who seem to revel in stories of their open marriages and are the most materialistic people Nell has come across. Nell's life is soon complicated further when an encounter with a young man at a nightclub and a friendship struck up with a local builder soon have Nell questioning everything in her life.
Fly or Fall is one of those books that draws you in right from the start. Immediately I felt sympathy for Nell and how everyone else seems so in charge of her life and she is merely a bystander. She initially is a woman who feels uncertain about her place in the world and is so desperate to blend into the background that she becomes invisible to the very people who should care about her. Nell's life and marriage are typical of many. She married young with very little choice in the matter and simply accepted her fate. She is constantly taken for granted by her children and manipulating husband Trevor. Kept in blissful ignorance about all aspects of her marriage and accepting of the loveless sex life, Nell simply just gets on with things and accepts her lot in life.
Initially, Nell appears to be an older woman and I found it shocking that as I read on I realised that she was in fact a much younger woman with all the regrets of someone who has lived a life full of regret and broken promises. Her outlook on life was jaded and her self esteem was in her boots. There are many underlying stories throughout the course of the book and Nell becomes embroiled in each of them. She struggles to understand the strange feelings that Patrick the builder evokes in her and David, the man she encounters at a nightclub.
Fly or Fall is a book about love, life and a desire to change, despite the fear of failure. In this story we see Nell change into someone that even she struggles to recognise. It is a story of regret too. Regret for those things not done, those adventures never embarked on and those feelings never given in to. However, soon Nell begins to wake up from the life she has sleepwalked through and a change is awakened in her. However, not everyone in her life is happy about it and Nell herself struggles with the range of emotions she feels and the desire to be a different person that suddenly appears from nowhere! Coupled with an attraction to two new men in her life, Nell struggles as her moral compass is unsure which direction it should be pointing.
Fly or Fall is a grown up book. It is a book about having the courage to fly when you are so afraid of falling. Highly recommended.
Fly or Fall is one of those books that draws you in right from the start. Immediately I felt sympathy for Nell and how everyone else seems so in charge of her life and she is merely a bystander. She initially is a woman who feels uncertain about her place in the world and is so desperate to blend into the background that she becomes invisible to the very people who should care about her. Nell's life and marriage are typical of many. She married young with very little choice in the matter and simply accepted her fate. She is constantly taken for granted by her children and manipulating husband Trevor. Kept in blissful ignorance about all aspects of her marriage and accepting of the loveless sex life, Nell simply just gets on with things and accepts her lot in life.
Initially, Nell appears to be an older woman and I found it shocking that as I read on I realised that she was in fact a much younger woman with all the regrets of someone who has lived a life full of regret and broken promises. Her outlook on life was jaded and her self esteem was in her boots. There are many underlying stories throughout the course of the book and Nell becomes embroiled in each of them. She struggles to understand the strange feelings that Patrick the builder evokes in her and David, the man she encounters at a nightclub.
Fly or Fall is a book about love, life and a desire to change, despite the fear of failure. In this story we see Nell change into someone that even she struggles to recognise. It is a story of regret too. Regret for those things not done, those adventures never embarked on and those feelings never given in to. However, soon Nell begins to wake up from the life she has sleepwalked through and a change is awakened in her. However, not everyone in her life is happy about it and Nell herself struggles with the range of emotions she feels and the desire to be a different person that suddenly appears from nowhere! Coupled with an attraction to two new men in her life, Nell struggles as her moral compass is unsure which direction it should be pointing.
Fly or Fall is a grown up book. It is a book about having the courage to fly when you are so afraid of falling. Highly recommended.
March 4, 2014
I was delighted to receive a review copy of 'Fly or Fall', since I have thoroughly enjoyed previous titles from this author, whose writing style is a little reminiscent of the excellent Deborah Moggach. What an engrossing story this is. Gilli Allan seems to get better and better in my opinion.
The story concerns the quiet and self-effacing Eleanor, as she journeys through a traumatic period of her life. Having become a teenage wife and mother, all she has known is devotion to her own invalid mother, her children and her husband. Her 13 year old twins sometimes seem to be more worldly-wise than her. She's suppressed her own needs and desires so completely that she seems almost without personality. As such, she is quite difficult to relate to intimately and the reader has to get to know her in the same way as the other characters. Nevertheless, it's impossible to dislike her. Like all Allan's characters, Eleanor is complex and real.
Eleanor's husband, Trevor is a rather devious, self-serving man; I suspected and disliked him from the outset and at no time did he redeem himself. Yet he was no less real - in fact I felt I knew him all too well! Having sold Eleanor's family home in Battersea for a substantial price, Trevor moves his family to the country to enjoy 'clean air, green fields, a house with a proper garden and a driveway'. Trevor selfishly pursues his new career and indulgences, while Eleanor tries to fit in with her sophisticated neighbours and sort out the marathon renovations of the new house. Enter Patrick, the builder, a likeable rogue, whose constant harmless lies make him enigmatic and fascinating and who extends a warm hand of friendship to Eleanor, helping her through her most difficult times.
The village of Downland is peopled with interesting characters, Katherine, Felicity, Elizabeth and their husbands as well as Patrick and the even more mysterious David, to whom Eleanor is secretly drawn. But no one in Downland is quite what they seem, as Eleanor has to discover in often painful ways. This includes her own family and most of all, herself.
Ms Allan writes about seemingly ordinary people in ordinary settings, but, of course, neither is ordinary. The characters are richly drawn in all their complexities, yet grittily realistic and engaging. The settings are carefully painted with the reverence of an artist who has a deep affinity with the countryside.
The story is compellingly told with a well-sustained narrative flow. I found it deeply engrossing and sat up late into the night more than once, unable to put it down. It gathers momentum, like a snowball rolling downhill, hurtling towards its dramatic conclusion. I look forward to reading more from this talented writer.
The story concerns the quiet and self-effacing Eleanor, as she journeys through a traumatic period of her life. Having become a teenage wife and mother, all she has known is devotion to her own invalid mother, her children and her husband. Her 13 year old twins sometimes seem to be more worldly-wise than her. She's suppressed her own needs and desires so completely that she seems almost without personality. As such, she is quite difficult to relate to intimately and the reader has to get to know her in the same way as the other characters. Nevertheless, it's impossible to dislike her. Like all Allan's characters, Eleanor is complex and real.
Eleanor's husband, Trevor is a rather devious, self-serving man; I suspected and disliked him from the outset and at no time did he redeem himself. Yet he was no less real - in fact I felt I knew him all too well! Having sold Eleanor's family home in Battersea for a substantial price, Trevor moves his family to the country to enjoy 'clean air, green fields, a house with a proper garden and a driveway'. Trevor selfishly pursues his new career and indulgences, while Eleanor tries to fit in with her sophisticated neighbours and sort out the marathon renovations of the new house. Enter Patrick, the builder, a likeable rogue, whose constant harmless lies make him enigmatic and fascinating and who extends a warm hand of friendship to Eleanor, helping her through her most difficult times.
The village of Downland is peopled with interesting characters, Katherine, Felicity, Elizabeth and their husbands as well as Patrick and the even more mysterious David, to whom Eleanor is secretly drawn. But no one in Downland is quite what they seem, as Eleanor has to discover in often painful ways. This includes her own family and most of all, herself.
Ms Allan writes about seemingly ordinary people in ordinary settings, but, of course, neither is ordinary. The characters are richly drawn in all their complexities, yet grittily realistic and engaging. The settings are carefully painted with the reverence of an artist who has a deep affinity with the countryside.
The story is compellingly told with a well-sustained narrative flow. I found it deeply engrossing and sat up late into the night more than once, unable to put it down. It gathers momentum, like a snowball rolling downhill, hurtling towards its dramatic conclusion. I look forward to reading more from this talented writer.
September 20, 2015
I really enjoyed this woman's journey of self-awareness and independence. Like the poem, Ithaca, it's about the journey and not the destination. It's a complicated and, at times, messy (but real) love story with two people who must grow as individuals before they can be with each other. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews